What is a Delaware Registered Agent?

A Delaware registered agent is a business entity’s contact with the Division of Corporations. Registered agents receive legal notices, such as service of process, and correspondence from the state of Delaware, such as Franchise Tax notices, and forward these documents to clients in a timely manner. Delaware corporations and LLCs are required by law to appoint a Delaware registered agent.

Registered agents must maintain a physical street address where service of process and other official documents can be served. A post office box is not acceptable.

Registered Agent Service in Delaware

Why do I need a registered agent in Delaware?

Delaware state law (8 Del. C. 1953, § 131) requires that any business entity formed with the Delaware Division of Corporations has a registered agent. This law is built around the idea of due process and that lawsuits can’t move forward in court unless the parties have been properly notified. Your Delaware registered agent serves as your business’ official point of contact with the state and the legal world. Although it may seem like a billing racket, having a reliable, tech-savvy registered agent service ensures you properly receive any official notices or services of process.

What does my Delaware registered agent do?

Delaware has attempted to offer you as many benefits as possible for forming your company in Delaware. The Delaware Division of Corporations asks you only for minimal information in order to form your company, and Delaware does not list that minimal info on its public website, forcing interested parties to buy copies of your formation documents in order to find your info. Delaware also doesn’t ask for shareholder or owner information for any of the Delaware companies registered with the DE Division of Corporations. This is all a huge benefit to you. When forming your Delaware company, the less any state agency has on you the better! The brilliant move is that the state requires us, your registered agent and say, “We’re just an administrative government agency; the registered agent is responsible for representing the people behind all the entities, and the IRS requires any Delaware company doing business to assign a person with a Social Security Number to that company, so you can subpoena the registered agent or the IRS.” So the great news for you is that the state doesn’t want your personal info! Delaware is very smart. By design, the state wants to:

Give you a reason to incorporate in Delaware,

Not harbor sketchy people, and

Have a way to track down the sketchy individuals behind sketchy Delaware entities if needed.

Having the DE Division of Corporations force you to hire a private company like Northwest Registered Agent to maintain your contact details can be way better than a state agency requiring you to name people in public documents, as long as your registered agent is trustworthy and has the security team in place to keep your personal information safe.

Your Delaware registered agent should have a system in place to immediately notify you of legal documents they receive. Northwest offers you an online account to help manage and organize these documents, and we also offer an extensive set of delivery options. With so many communication options today (cell, voip, text, apps, multiple emails, etc.) it’s important to have options that suit how you want to receive notifications.

Anyone wanting to properly notify your company will look up your company’s information and send a complaint or notice to your Delaware registered agent. Your registered agent should have a reliable, commercial address and office and be open during business hours to accept these documents for you and make sure you get them, see them, and understand them.

Your Delaware registered agent receives all the notices from the Delaware Division of Corporations for filing annual reports and annual franchise taxes. The DE Division of Corporations will call and talk to your registered agent if they have a question about your business or need to get a hold of you.

A Delaware registered agent can file the formation paperwork with the state to keep your name completely off the organizer role, but this is not a requirement. There’s no requirement to hire someone to form your Delaware business entity.

Can I be my own registered agent in Delaware?

Yes, you can be your own registered agent in Delaware. A registered agent must be a Delaware resident or business entity with a physical address in Delaware where the registered agent will keep regular business hours and accept hand-delivered services of process (no P.O. Boxes). Be aware, though, that if your business is sued and you are your own registered agent, the sheriff, deputy, or process server will be delivering the lawsuit to your home or place of business which can be distracting, if not flat-out embarrassing. But if you’d like to save some money, you just need to live in Delaware and be willing to list your address and name on public documents. (The state and court needs to be able to serve legal process and notices on your business in Delaware. That’s why a registered agent has to have a physical location actually in Delaware).

Why should I hire a professional registered agent service for my Delaware business?

If your business is web-based or doesn’t have a physical presence within Delaware, the business still needs a registered agent located inside state lines.

Some Delaware business owners hire registered agent services because their business doesn’t keep regular business hours in which service of process or official mail can be delivered.

Privacy. Many business owners don’t want their home or business address listed on public record as a point of contact, so they hire a registered agent.

Avoiding distractions. Listing an employee or family member as your registered agent could be a huge mistake, as that may be the last person you want knowing the intimate details of lawsuits your business might become entangled in. Worse, just having a process server hand them a document is proof that you got it, regardless of whether they actually get it to you in a timely manner. You could miss a court deadline before realizing it.

If you don’t want the added responsibility of tracking mail and notices from the Delaware Division of Corporations, you can hire a registered agent to track the important paperwork for you. Having an online account to help maintain your business is often worth the nominal registered agent fee.

How much does Northwest Registered Agent charge for its registered agent service?

$125 per year. No hidden fees, plus automatic discounts for more states and companies as your portfolio grows.

What does Northwest Registered Agent offer me in return for $125?

We have the most extensive alert system in the business. Seriously. If you want us to bug you and anyone else you elect to be responsible for the documents until you actually look at these documents, we can accomplish this. We do not take our responsibility lightly. When we receive a document for you, it starts a serious timeline and over the course of the next week, you’ll get regular emails, phone calls, faxes, texts, and lastly mailed notices to look at your lawsuit. We can notify your attorney in real time for certain documents and other people of importance as well. For a visual of this real-time process, check out our Registered Agent Infographic. You can customize the whole experience down to who gets notified about what type of document. For heavy volume lawsuit clients, we even have a special management portal where all your docs are OCR’d and customizable to meet your needs.

When we receive a notice from the state of Delaware or a service of process for your business, within minutes we will scan the documents at our Delaware office and upload the documents to your online account. When this happens, you will instantly receive an email prompting you to log into your account to view the documents. We’re the only national registered agent service that uploads everything locally in Wilmington, DE to your account in real time.

We also send you reminders when any business reports to the Delaware Division of Corporations are due. We don’t try to upsell your annual report to you or dupe you into having us file it and mark it up. We give you the link, the form, and the instructions to do it yourself and save.

Once you hire Northwest Registered Agent, you will also have instant access to your account online. There, you’ll find every Delaware state form you could file, and each form is pre-populated with our information. We also include ordering sheets and all kinds of state forms that aren’t easy to find.

On top of that, you’ll also find instructions and tips from our business professionals on the best ways to file forms with the states and make payments to the state with no additional markup.

Plus, if you have questions concerning your business entity, you can call us at no additional charge and a real, live, knowledgeable human being will provide you with answers—we’re customer service at its best.

We’re national, so you can add as many states as you need to get registered in and the forms to file and instructions are always there. Plus, as you get more states, you get an automatic discount. Having one vendor manage all your companies in one account will save you a lot of headaches.

How does Delaware know who my registered agent is?

When you form an LLC or corporation in Delaware, you will file official paperwork (certificate of incorporation for corporations, certificate of formation for an LLC) with the DE Division of Corporations. These certificates specifically ask for the name and address of your registered agent office in Delaware.

Delaware’s certificate of incorporation asks that I list the registered office. What is that?

The registered office is the physical address of the registered agent where official mail and services of process will be sent. This is also the address that will be listed as the business’ contact on the DE Division of Corporation’s public records.

Are there any business entities in Delaware that aren’t required have a registered agent?

Sole proprietorships are the only business types that aren’t required to have a registered agent in Delaware because they aren’t officially formed with the Division of Corporations. But sole proprietorships also don’t provide business owners any of the limited liability or potential tax benefits that come with an official business entity.

Delaware non profits are included in the business entities that are required to have a DE registered agent.

Should I hire a registered agent before forming my corporation or LLC?

Yes. You will be unable to form a Delaware business entity if you do not have your registered agent’s information.

How do I look up a DE business and contact their Delaware registered agent?

Sometimes I see the name registered agent, resident agent, or statutory agent. Is there a difference?

Only in the name; the job of the registered agent is the same no matter how the state refers to them. Chalk the differences up to bureaucracy and semantics. Official documentation from Delaware will always refer to them as registered agents.

What if I never get sued? Does my registered agent provide any additional services?

First, if you never get sued, congratulations! But don’t think of fees paid for a registered agent service as wasted money. Your Delaware registered agent should also keep you updated on any business reports owed to the state. And if you hire Northwest Registered Agent, we’ll provide you with any form you could file in Delaware, along with helpful tips for filing forms and paying the state with no markup, as well as amazing customer service. If you end up with multiple states with us, you’ll be able to easily see your annual report dates in every state in your account.

What if I get sued all the time? Does Northwest Registered Agent charge additional fees?

Northwest Registered Agent doesn’t charge more for high volume clients. If you know you’re going to get served hundreds of times a year, we should create a custom price for you that makes sense to both parties. Our typical clients get less than 15 law suits a year and never pay additional fees.

How is a registered agent in Delaware served with a lawsuit?

A process server will deliver a summons form (basically instructions for responding to the lawsuit) and a complaint form (this describes who is suing, the reasoning behind the lawsuit, and what the person or entity suing want from the lawsuit—typically this is an amount of money) to a Delaware registered agent’s address. The registered agent will sign the process server’s documents acknowledging receipt of the lawsuit. If you’ve hired us, within minutes of receiving service of process, we’ll upload the document to your account and you’ll instantly receive an email prompting you to log into your account.

So I can really hire Northwest Registered Agent for only $125 a year and there are no hidden fees?

Absolutely. In three minutes, you can fill out our signup form and you’ll instantly have access to your online account with everything you need.

What if I already have a registered agent, but I want to switch to Northwest Registered Agent? Can you help me?

Definitely. Call us or for more information or you can read up here on the process to change Delaware registered agents. We’ll even pay and file the change of agent filing for you.

How much extra does Northwest charge to form my corporation or LLC in Delaware?

$100 plus the state filing fees.

Do I really need hire someone else to do my Delaware filing?

No. Part of the reason people incorporate in Delaware is because the formation documents require little information and are easy to file. But it really depends on your comfort level filing government forms, which may sound intimidating, but throughout our website you’ll find all the resources you need to help you complete your filing.

One thing to remember in Delaware in particular is that the person who submits the filing has to have their name on the corporate paperwork. If you hire someone like Northwest Registered Agent to submit the filing for you, our name is there instead of yours (someone would need to pay $30 to get a copy of your DE company’s formation documents). If this doesn’t concern you, there’s really no point in paying someone to form the company for you, as you’re basically filing a form where you only need to write down the desired company name and sign it.

Also, keep in mind that if you do hire us as your registered agent, in your online account you’ll find all the forms you need to create your corporation or LLC with the state of Delaware. All forms are pre-populated with our information and you’ll find some helpful tips to make forming your business as simple as possible. There’s a fax cover sheet in your account and you can simply fax your filing into the Delaware Division of Corporations and pay them direct with a credit card.

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